Sue (36) Joe (35) John (34) & sketches

Another quick ‘weekend portrait’ today. This one is of a high school friend from our Marching Band percussion section, Sue. This one was a combination of pencil sketch and an oil paint overlay.

Got up early this morning and did this portrait of Joe (one of the songwriter regulars who attend the monthly GRSA meetings). Not much of a stretch today, just did this one in colored pencil/watercolors.

Today’s ‘facebook challenge’ portrait is of a fellow named John who I played a little music with two years ago. I tried to push myself into unfamiliar territory with this one, doing the entire thing using the ‘palette knife’ tools (something I’m not only a novice at in the digital realm, but something I never tried much of in the real world). A little tricky figuring out the angles you have to maintain with your drawing stylus, since each angle seems to correspond with varying degrees of tilt with the ‘knife’.

Above was my entry into this week’s “Blown Cover” blog contest. This week’s theme was on economic inequality and I really struggled with this one for several days. I woke up early in the morning on Wednesday with what seemed at the time a really brilliant idea, only to arrive at my desk in the clear light of dawn with the realization that it was incredibly stupid and convoluted (it was something to do with ‘trickle down economics’ and a bright yellow stream of urine), so I ended up doing this ‘let them eat cake’ concept instead (and of course, I wasn’t the only one to employ ‘cake’ in their concept).
Anyhow, on to some ‘real work’…

Here’s a series of three sketches for a Chronicle assignment that I’ll be finishing up early next week.